Joe O'Connor: No amount of 'physical literacy' could teach a kid the Gretzky magic we all loved

I spent an afternoon with Walter Gretzky at his Brantford, Ont., home a while back, talking about his son, Wayne, the greatest hockey player that ever lived.

Walter, and he will insist that you call him Walter, not Mr. Gretzky, spoke about the curious things Wayne did as a wee lad. How, at age 7, he would plop himself, unprompted, in front of the television to watch Hockey Night in Canada with a pencil and paper in hand, drawing lines. Some straight; others curved.

He was always thinking about the game, even then

Walter did not think much of it until he asked the boy what, exactly, he was up to, to which Wayne replied that he was following the “puck.”

“‘Dad, dad, don’t you see?’” Walter remembered him saying. ‘Where the lines cross is where the puck is the most.’

“Isn’t that something?” Walter said to me, a look of wonder in his eyes. “He was seven. He was always thinking about the game, even then.”

Wayne Gretzky was seeing the game, even then, like only Wayne Gretzky could, with an otherworldly sense, a picture in his head that his father didn’t put there and that no hockey coach ever could because the essence of what made Wayne Gretzky Wayne Gretzky wasn’t a learned skill — it was magic, an inexplicable gift, with a splash of genetics thrown in.

That ole Gretzky magic came to mind the other day when I was introduced to a new term — “physical literacy” — a 21st century buzzword being promoted by Active For Life, a Canadian not-for-profit. Physical literacy, we are told, is the cure for all that ails our tubby, lazy, inactive, can’t-hit-a-barn-door-with-a-baseball-if-they-tried, electronic-gadget-loving kids.

Sara Smeaton used to write notes to excuse herself from gym class — and she got her mother to write them too. A dancer, gymnast and swimmer as a kid, she ditched the pool at age 10 after she was put in a lonely synchronized swimming class.

“You can’t synchronize swim by yourself without feeling like a huge loser,” says the Toronto mother of two. That was the “turning point” — the moment she decided she was just not “sporty.” A sedentary adolescence took hold.

A few years ago, she saw a flash of herself in her 6-year-old daughter who declared one day that reading, not being outside and active, was her “thing.”

“It was interesting to me that she felt the two were mutually exclusive, which, of course, they’re not,” she said. “That’s been a huge shift now.”

The shift came after Ms. Smeaton learned about the emerging concept of physical literacy, which professes that just as children need to learn reading, writing and basic math to succeed in life, so too must they know how to move and be confident in their bodies.

“Just as important as a child learning to read, write and do math, physical literacy also must be taught,” a recent Active for Life media release states. “Being physically literate is not only the foundation for being successful in sports, physically literate kids get higher grades in school, have better social skills, and are happier and more confident.”

The altruistic intent here is to benefit our kids. But best intentions are blind to a few fundamental truths: Not everybody is good at, or interested in, sports. Some kids would rather sit and read a book than throw a beanbag, and that’s OK, while others are simply born with a good set of hands.

Physical activity, at its core, is about moving, having fun, by gum, but it is also about God-given talent and not weaving in and out of pylons at age 3 in an attempt to manufacture it. We already coach our kids to death in reading, writing, arithmetic, and in looking both ways before they cross the street. The hovering, paralyzed-by-fear parenting style is epidemic, as we know, and now we are being told we should hover some more by coaching kids on how to move their bodies properly from age 0-8?

It sounds overbearing, another parental ball and chain shackling our little people to an over-monitored life. (Whatever happened to opening the back door and letting a child go outside to run around? To play.)

Earl Woods, father of Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, was big on the fundamentals of movement. He stuck a golf club in his son’s hand at age 2. Tiger, boy, he can sure smack a golf ball. But he has the personality of a robot. And nobody likes him.

Wayne Gretzky, we loved, and still do. Not because he was physically literate, but because of the Gretzky magic, something even his father was astonished to see.